I won’t fight in your war,
I’m too busy fighting in my own.
You make sacrifices
That aren’t yours to make,
A heavy bill you don’t foot.  
there are white roses that have grown
In a field you turned into a battle ground,
They are red now,
Stained by blood that is not your own.
And it drips onto the grass,
Into the soil,
and from the soil,
Into me.
Into all of us.
Into you, but you don’t know that.
I’ve been growing white roses lately,
That’s my war.
And they grow towards the sky,
Despite the fact they sprout
From the rubble you’ve left behind.
And unlike you I don’t pick their petals.
Their thorns don’t scare me because
They belong to them, not me.
They don’t mean to harm you,
They are just protecting themselves from you.
Though certainly
You have been harmed by others.  
A bullet.
A bomb.
A bombardment.
A breath of fire.
A bulletin board of things
That don’t need to happen.
I come to find it’s better
not to point the finger at white roses
Or their thorns.
Or myself.
This one falls on you.
So no,
I won’t fight in your war,
I’m too busy.
I’m just way too ******* busy,
Fighting my own.

If I were a card in the deck,
I don’t know what one I’d be.
And I don’t know of those cards,
Which ones sit in my back pocket.
I’m not sure I’m any of them,
And I don’t think any of the 52
Were made for me.
A card feels like a weapon,
I can’t help but wonder
If weapons were initially made to hurt others,
Or to protect ourselves from them.
But it seems for most of us,
We play a lot of
Aces against ourselves.
And in the face of seconds,
We understand very little.
Like how many seconds it took
To make a bouquet,
A bridge,
A bomb,
A person,
A picture of people,
Of me,
Of her,
Of you.
I question how many more seconds,
This glass will have champagne in it.
Well, it’s Prosecco, actually.
The seconds don’t care if it came from
California or France,
And apparently tonight I could give a ****.
That glass is my one companion,
This cold evening on Lincoln street.
It plays no cards against me.
We decided, very mutually,
to put down our weapons for a night.
Or for at least a second.
Just so we could shuffle the deck.

And as I lie next to her I feel as though I’m falling
From the stars down to an earth I don’t recognize
At a speed faster than terminal velocity.
I don’t know if I can’t sleep or don’t want to,
The lights of the skyscrapers ooze through
The bedroom window
And cover her anatomy
Like the dusting of the first snow
On new dahlia,
Earlier than it came last year,
Or the year before,
Or any year I can remember.
She need not dream about me,
So long as she awakens to me.
Her chest rises and falls,
My body throbs in waves of merciful tepidity
And colors drip into her dreaming mind.
I don’t feel scared.
For the first time I’d rather sit than run.
I listen to her with my eyes.
I see her in split seconds when I blink.
There are people who don’t know each other who want to go to war.
We don’t know each other, but maybe we could end one.

There’s a battle
That they don’t see
Between the david and Goliath
Within me
Some mornings my feet drag
More than they skip,
I skip breakfast
Because it doesn’t make me
Less hungry
And courage is fragile at times
Because it’s most often the sister of fear,
I want to be the way she moves,
Slow motion,
When water is white,
But also the river when it feels still.
I still feel,
And David loads his sling,
David got me this far,
I believe in him more than god.
Do you?

What if the lion was scared?
What if what goes up didn’t come down.
What if I placed a bet,
Somehow, against my garden.
What if i stopped looking,
What might I not find?
I know they didn’t build skyscrapers
To get closer to heaven.
What if the moon was no closer.
What if I could barely acknowledge,
The force it takes
For a blade of grass to grow.
And somewhere along a horizon I’ll never meet,
Lies the exploding of a star,
I named after you.

I’m waiting,
And not too desperately,
Until something is enough.
I desire,
Just as the moon moves tides,
Predictably,
Always on schedule.
The glass slipper I keep in my back pocket,
Grows cold, and I wonder if a different material might fit an idea more comfortably.
To say goodbye so many times,
Does not take anything from hello.
I’ve heard the core of the earth is very hot,
And that makes the most sense to me.
Somewhere beneath it all something burns,
And I want to know what it has to say.

She told me,
“I want to be close.”
I replied,
“It’s lovely to sit by a fire,
less lovely to be in one.”

I hope you cancel me,
I’m sick of you
and most everyone else.
They talk
too **** much.
Except for the mailman,
who comes
to my apartment building
everyday.
He puts every letter
in every right box.
He has made other mistakes
in this life,
but has never put a letter
in the wrong box.
And some of the letters
are regretful,
love letters
that in 2 years
will find themselves
in the fireplace.
Maybe a birthday card
from Buddy,
which will be kept forever
because it is the last one
you ever got from him.
The best letter I got
was from the queen
of Cap Hill,
and there were
no words written on it.
Blank piece of paper,
I wrote a poem on it
and threw it away.
I’ve seen the mailman everyday
for 28 years,
and he never says a word.

Tell me about how how you are a just a tourist everywhere you go.
Let me pick you up from the train station,
and drive you past
balance beam sidewalks
you once walked on
to get home after
you bulldozed the night
out of the sky.
Our lips tango
at every red light.
When they do,
I forget myself.
The light turns green,
I change the song.
I the mouse.
You the cat;
playing youthfully
with the terrified dinner you caught.

It was the kind of love
where when her heart would beat
blood would pump through my veins.

What good are these words
utterances
noise
in my ears
in my head.
They are always on sale,
and always on back order.
Words
surely won’t
bring back
the Amazon,
they won’t save
the pig
from the knife.
They will never
wrap themselves around
how much I miss the
girl I’ve never seen,
let alone met,
let alone kissed,
let alone left.
How I miss
the moon
that never set,
how I miss the words
I never said,
the place I’ve never been
filled with streets
I’ve never walked,
full of puddles
that reflect the green stop light,
the neon light
in the old star drenched bar
I never visited
to quiet
the words
in my head.
The words.
Always on sale,
always on back order.

I think it’s finally time
to get glasses.
Maybe I’m just getting older
or maybe I’ve stared
into the sun
for too long.
I can’t make out
her face
as she feels
for ripened avocados
across the produce section
from me.
But maybe I don’t want to,
the mystery,
curiosity,
I dream
pleasant fallacies,
I’d rather not know
the color of her eyes
or the mess of
old newspapers
in her skull.
The second
I’m close enough
to be able to make out
her smile
I’m done.
I don’t want to see
her
ugly
yellow
crooked
teeth.

In a past life
I think I was
an elevator operator.
Like one
back in the olden
days.
Going up.
And down.
And up again.
Back down.
Talking about
the weather
with people
who were somewhat
strangers,
even though
I saw most of them
everyday.
And when I first started,
I liked the music,
but anything played
over and over again
starts to sound like hell.
It was an elevator
I had never gotten off.
And I know I was
an elevator operator
in a past life
because it wasn’t
so long ago.
Now I’m somewhat
more of a crane operator,
or a train conductor,
the card in my own
back pocket,
or the time it takes
the occipital lobe
of a child
to register the light
in the pupil
that paints the picture
of everything new.

And I’d go to church in the mountains
and sing praises with the crows in the pines
to a god most misunderstood,
rarely seen or heard;
the lynx of the feeling in my sternum,
the missing word in my vocabulary that
has bought permanent real estate
on the tip of my tongue.
And then she looks at you
with Medusa eyes
that turn you to stone.
You lie there naked
arms and legs woven together
like sacred silk,
the warm blanket of god,
the purring lynx.

This whole thing
might be harder
if we were more aware.
Ignorance is my EpiPen.
Tell me stars are just fireflies
putting on a show,
all for me.
Convince me
that you are not from here,
but here alone.
Persuade me
there is an after party
where you will meet me
and we’ll take the tram
out of the skylight
and fall asleep together
in a bed of telephone wires
carrying words of honey.
Assure me that rivers
stay the same,
that days never end,
the nights don’t either,
that the world is static,
and that I’ll feel this way forever.
Lie to me if you have to,
but do it with the same
sugar cane lips
you press to my shoulder.

We lay there naked
loving and laughing,
soundlessly saying
sweet things
with delicate finger tips,
escaping, for a moment,
from the fire
burning the world
outside the bedroom
door.

Light pollution
may be
a necessary evil.
But beyond that,
the only other necessary evil
I know of is love.
My heart goes far away,
when I think about her.
We are rubber bands
laid next to another
amongst many others
on the bungee rope
that ties the sun
to the earth.
This rope is strong,
but it stretches
and constricts
in a way that
brings the winter
and the summer,
the day and the night,
darkness and light;
you are the martini
of my Monday.

I am not the lion
I am the impala.
I am the cabinet
in the kitchen
left wide open.
I am here
for so much of my life
setting alarms
on my phone
for the next morning.
The ash tray
is filled
with exactly 73 cigarettes,
but not exactly 73 memories,
and not exactly 73 regrets.

I’ve never considered
that there was ever
a moment
that music didn’t enhance.
But I’ve finally found
a peace in my life,
however fleeting,
where the green light
on Grant street
is the drop
I’ve been waiting for.

What an inconsistency,
that the rain or her
bioluminescent smile
can cool
this sun drenched balcony
down to a place
that makes you
the good kind of cold
in early July.
It’s too ridiculous to seem real;
no one would ever give something
as ethereal away to someone else.
Or maybe that’s not true.
Maybe that’s what keeps
the asteroids from hitting earth.

Rarely, if ever,
the toolbox in the closet
comes out for some
easy fix.
Today it was my lawn chair.
But I can’t use a wrench
to fix the way you look at me,
as you try to sip
the entire Colorado river
through a plastic straw.
Part of me wants to let you
have your fun,
to believe that across
the table from me
you might find
your own wrench.
But stainless steel
has no effect on the cortex,
no effect on the river,
no effect on a sun
that has overstayed its
welcome.
Drink me
until the wrench
must come out,
but I have a duty
to warn you
that I am not
a lawn chair.

Some days I feel
like a guitar
that is missing
a string.
It sounds sad
but I assure you
it’s okay.
And I’ll never know
the sound that string sings,
but my foolish heart
believes that string
is the one that says everything;
the one that puts me in the veins
under your skin,
between the synapses that fire
in your mind,
between your inhale
and exhale,
and on the tip of your tongue,
so that I can taste you
before my moon
splits in two.

Only her evergreen eyes
and painfully pink lips
can pull an object,
a young fool,
14 floors towards the earth,
faster than gravity.
The longest day of the year
had a clock that was criminally
insane,
the hour hand
moved like a propeller
of a plane,
and flew me to somewhere
that felt familiar
but I’ve never been.
And the moon I told her
that was mine,
really belongs to her.

The Fernet-Branca,
sipped slowly,
seems to go well
with the pack of yellow American Spirits,
though I usually go with
the light blue pack.
Yellow does the trick tonight.

From the 14th floor
the city lights of Denver
are blurry.
So are the morning emails,
the slot for quarters
on the laundry machine,
the cars that pass on 8th
headed to wherever,
and you.

The ***** dishes sit in the sink,
piled up,
like the thoughts in our skulls
or feelings in our fingernails.
And sometimes we clean them,
but more often than not they just sit there,
in the sink, in our kitchen, in our cold
little apartment on Pennsylvania street.
And we pass each other in hallways,
saying something like "hello" or "how's it going?"
or maybe nothing at all.
The ambulances drive by
and sometimes we hear them,
but mostly we pay no mind.
The nightly news plays in the background,
but I don't know what they are saying anymore
because I can't distinguish the news anchor's
words from the ambulance siren.
And we gaze through our microscopes,
looking at the content of our lives
on a fragile glass slide
upon which squirm the infinitesimal
bacteria that we took from the sink.

Put me on a stage
and give me the whole orchestra
to amplify the melody
of hazy lungs and mind,
let it drown out the static of our lives
so that I can act
just for a moment
like I'm someone else.

There was a poor
shepherd boy
who used to throw
stones at the castle
walls every day.
Every day
he would return
with pockets full
of stones,
and the walls
would stand there
mocking him.
But it was futile,
despite all of the
stones he'd thrown,
the walls continued
to stand
and the king
continued to oppress
his kingdom.
In throwing stones,
the boy had garnered
quite the arm.
One day
he came to the walls
with pockets
full of seeds.
He threw the seeds
over the walls,
and trees
and flowers
started to grow
on inside of the
castle walls.  
The king became
quite distraught about this
and ordered his servants
to pick every newly sprouted
plant out of the ground.
But they could not keep up.
The boy threw more and more
seeds every day,
and the plants started overtaking
the castle.
Birds, butterflies,
and other creatures
invaded the castle.
The castle became so infested
with life,
that the king could no longer
do anything about it,
and the roots of the trees
started to grow into
and fracture the castle walls.
And little by little those walls
crumbled.
And by the time they did,
the king did not care,
his castle was more
beautiful now
than it ever had been.
Once the walls fell,
the king could see
all of the people outside
of them.
The king finally understood.

There are 7.6 billion people
In this world.
Behind every set of eyes
A different universe.
I’m in love with yours
But not you
Anymore.
You made mine
*****.
The strings
Of lights
On the trees
Make me sad.
We put them up
In December
And they make us feel
like basement
Temperature
Flat beer juice,
And then January comes
Like law enforcement
To the rager you held
While your parents
Were in Doore County.
And everyone leaves the party.
And we all take the lights down.
This is
1 of 7.6 billion.

Certainly
When she used
To look at me,
All of the factories
Would shut down.
But now,
I see a forest
Filled with vines
That suffocate trees.
They climb and ****
To survive
And I still don’t know why.

You were my cup of coffee,
burning my lips on the first
sip of your being,
making my heart beat faster.
My hands began to shake
as I got half way through you.
But I didn't drink you fast enough
and consequently you became cold.
Towards the bottom of you
I chewed on the room temperature
grinds of what gave you
flavor in the first place.
I left you this way,
with no desire
to order another one.
One of the greatest pains in life
is that no coffee stays hot forever,
at least not for me.

Now I'm just the fly
on the rim of her
chardonnay glass.
A tourist everywhere I go.
It brings me back to
that apartment in the South Bronx,
an onion disguised as an apple,
an old boy who no longer trusts
the weatherman.
I leave the lights on when I'm gone
so that coming home feels less lonely.

The days pass
under feet
like cracks in the sidewalk
under pressure
by the traffic jam
of cognition ants
that echos with
the engines on 8th.
They slip our minds
like hair
down the shower drain,
minuscule things that
we can lose
because they seem so
dispensable.
But the old man still sings,
the crows still fly north
toward downtown,
and far away galaxies
still waltz,
out in the cold
and empty,
before you,
now,
and long after.
It is a ****** kind
of gorgeous,
where even the eyes
of a stranger
can help us
to thaw.

The world is burning
it lights the tip of this spliff
spiffy satisfaction is what we want
what is the market price for that?
And so tied tight and hard to get undone
are the sun and the moon,
midnight and noon,
me and you,
soon,
maybe we don't sleep tonight.

Just like the gun
and the bullet,
we were made for each other
but ended up
so **** far
apart.

I'm in between two apartments.
I'm lonely.
I was planted here
by the owner
of the apartment
on the left.
I'm the only rosebush.
I've been here
for about
ten years
and I wish
that I could
move to a spot
with a little more sunlight.

She couldn't go back
to her empty apartment.
It's not that her feet
couldn't handle the
five block walk,
it's more that
Lafayette street never felt
like home.
In fact, no place has,
at least not since
there first were new
colors in the sky.
She curses the sun
but not other stars;
they had never burnt
her skin.

And somewhere
out in the cosmos
between black nothingness
and star glitter
she was hoping
to find someone,
someone she mistook
for me.

I can see the whole city from up here.
There are buildings reaching for the sky,
so as to expedite the process
of getting into some heaven
that doesn't exist for most of
the people here.
The roads are woven together like a fabric
that is less like silk
and more like the towels
at any of the ****** motels lining Colfax.
The same smog that clouds my mind
lays atop this concrete like a warm blanket
that eats away at your lungs before moving
on to your soul for dessert.
I see only a few castles
yet there are kingdoms of shanties.
There are no gardens here
and the trees are fake.
If pain could manifest itself
in any physical form, it would take the shape
of this city.

And yet, I can see a shirtless old man,
singing along with the radio on his balcony
and drinking the beer I used to drink when
I was a teenager.
The sun still penetrates the smog
and presses its lips to the skin and antiquated shape
of his weathered body.

I can't pretend to know his story
or anyone's story for that matter,
but the echo
of his voice and radio
are the staunchest display
of protest I have ever seen.
In a world suffocated
by the cacophony of our
shared suffering,
his song is the anthem
for us all.

I won't fight
your war anymore.

I've seen it
from the ground
and I've seen it
from the sky.
And from these
vantage points
my eyes
will always
remember
the picture
of the blood
that my heart
no longer pumps
yet will never
forget.
Your killing machines
are the brightest blue.
They used to be
as loud as
fighter jets
but now I
only hear them
in the whispers
that haunt
the rubble
of who I am.
This poem is
nothing more
than a waving
white flag
atop that rubble;
the dandelion
that grows
from the vestiges
of what remains.

I won't fight
your war anymore.

I’m on the brink
of something new,
like a child in a spring garden
full of morning
and flowers
that are inviting
the pollinators in
for a cup of sweet tea.
And between the plants,
air, and the soil of my soul
I’ve found a hope
that throws its beams
off of the moon
and into the eyes
of a better man
on his way
to better days
and dreams
beyond his sleep.

I move around
like an ant in the garden.
I see flower sky scrapers
and leaf highways.
I have no idea
how small I am,
but if I did
I’d know what things
to care about
and what to
let go of.

Take the smoke
around the corner
with a grain of
tequila,
life is better
like this.

Pour me a shot of something
that actually interests me
and I’ll pour you a shot of
how sorry I actually am.
Pour me a full glass,
I can handle it.
Pour me a shot of
hope.
Pour me a shot of
I don’t care,
with a splash of
seriousness.
Light the place up,
I’ve got all night.

Quit me the way
rain drops quit
the cloud from which
they came.
Back to the earth
you go,
I might plan
on visiting soon.
Might.

I wish that we were
bound by the pain
that we all share,
the way a drop of water
is bound to the ocean.
But we are not.
Instead, we wander
headless and heartless,
and chasing
the horizon of
our fellow human’s strife
proves futile
lest we recognize
that love is the only way
we will ever meet the sun
where it sets.

I took a sip of my beer
and then I said
to the monkey on my back,
“Nothing has ever hurt
so much in my life.”
He took a breath,
then a sip of his beer
and said,
“Ah, it must be love.”

What no one understood about her
was that all she wanted was to feel loved,
and none of those beds made her
feel that way.
She went to the highest mountains
and to the bottom of the ocean,
only to find fleeting satisfactions
that flew by like birds
too busy to stop and sing her a song.
Her eyes didn’t stop,
but the places that she looked
had no interest in making
a home for her.
It wasn’t until she found her goddess
in the mirror
that she went back to her own bed,
drifting in and out of the dream
that she lived;
drifting in and out of love
with herself and the world around her.

When she woke up
her heart was met with the song
of a bird that finally stopped
to sing her a song,
and I think I just might
keep singing to her
as long as the sun
continues to rain
down on her
and kiss the eyes
that had finally found
what she had been looking for.

I mowed the lawn yesterday
and it felt terrible.
This complacency
has made my feet heavier,
and though the road continues
I now walk it with cinder block slippers,
unsure of how much further
I’ll actually go.
I can feel a white picket fence
in my future,
trapping me in
and my dreams out,
coddling me
with the indifference
that trickles through
the cracks of our lives.
I feel myself becoming like
everybody else,
and I’ve never been so afraid in my life.

Sometimes it feels
like people are all the same,
and I don’t want to be like them.
Watch how they fight
because they think
they are different.

It’s the small things
that get us through
and eat us alive.

And we sat there
drinking cold beers
on a rainy front porch day
wondering how
there could be
so many good people
in such a sick
world.